Languages are very important for the exchange of ideas. Better communication also facilitates the sharing of ideas between peoples. The Goethe-Institut invited me to take a German course in Düsseldorf in 2010. You’d think such courses only serve the purpose of language acquisition. Far from it! You also get to know German culture, politics, cuisine and, of course, Germans themselves. I also got an opportunity to visit the headquarters of the regional audit office in Düsseldorf. My colleague there, who was grappling with the problem of regional public debt in a similar way [...], introduced me to a new guideline at the federal level: the “debt brake”, the “golden rule” of fiscal policy. It was all about the problem we were both up against, namely large public debt. Upon my return, I sought to implement this rule and, without going into any detail, the debt brake was ultimately enshrined in Article 148 of the Slovenian constitution.

Jörg Kristijan Petrovič